1. Technical Field
The disclosure relates generally to integrated circuit (IC) chip fabrication, and more particularly, to an electronically programmable fuse having an anode and link surrounded by a low dielectric constant material.
2. Background Art
Fuse devices are used in numerous integrated circuit (IC) chip applications. For example, fuse devices may be included in redundancy implementation in memory arrays, field programmable arrays, voltage trimming resistors/capacitors, radio frequency (RF) circuit tuning, electronic chip identification, usage tracking/diagnostic data log, remote disablement for a device/car that is reported stolen, read only memory (ROM), etc. Fuse devices are realized using many different technologies and materials in the IC chip fabrication industry. In U.S. Pat. No. 2005/0285224A1, electromigration or agglomeration of silicide is used for an electronically programmable fuse (efuse). U.S. Pat No. 2006/0108662 A1 discloses a single crystal fuse on a semiconductor on insulator (SOI) substrate in which electromigration is used to program the fuse. As in U.S. Pat. No. 2006/0043595A1, phase change materials such as germanium-antimony-tellerium (GST) (Ge2Sb2Te5 or GeSbSi) can be used in a fuse device as well as in non-volatile memory. Anti-fuse devices using gate dioxide breakdown in a typical gate structure are used as well, e.g., as in U.S. Pat. No. 2006/0102982A1.
One challenge relative to these devices is performing efficient programming. That is, controlling electromigration by application of a voltage to cause activation of the fuses. For example, in the case of the non-volatile memory using phase change materials, a new material and/or processing steps compared to the standard complementary metal dioxide semiconductor (CMOS) processing is required for further development to occur. In the case of anti-fuse device using gate dioxide breakdown in a typical gate structure, a high voltage is typically required. However, the high voltage is problematic to other devices.